Noel Meade
Pinch Hitter won the Galway Hurdle in 1982 and they partied like it was 1999.
Different times.
The party started earlier in the week when Pinch Hitter won the Galway Mile, the McDonogh Handicap, the race they now call the Colm Quinn BMW Mile, but victory in the Galway Hurdle took it to another level. The Galway Hurdle was always the race that Noel Meade wanted to win, more than any other race at Galway, more than any other race anywhere. There was context.
They did a lap of the racecourse and nobody went home. Back then, they didn’t leave the racecourse until they closed the bars, and they didn’t close the bars until long after the last race had been run. Noel Meade and his good friend Finbarr Cahill, Pinch Hitter’s owner, got his car and drove around the racecourse. A victory lap, he calls it.
“You couldn’t do it today,” says the trainer. Wistful. “That was a long time ago.”
1982 was the year of the Offaly goal, Séamus Darby’s goal, that deprived Kerry of five All-Ireland titles in a row. That’s how long ago 1982 is. They pedestrianised Grafton Street in 1982. Come On Eileen flew high in the charts.
The context runs deep. Noel Meade grew up going to Galway. His family didn’t have any real involvement in, nor interest in, racing, but his uncle Tom Halpin, his mother’s brother, loved his racing, and he used to bring young Noel and his own son James to the races. They would go racing all over the country, but Galway stood out.
“We used to stay in a caravan in Galway for the week,” he recalls. “I’m sure I missed a year or two at Galway back then, but I didn’t miss many, and I haven’t missed many in the last 50 years.”
Noel was 16 when his dad got ill, and he had to leave school and go home to look after the farm, but his passion for horses remained undimmed. He and his good friend Michael Condra bought the horse after whom he would name his yard, Tu Va, at Goffs for a hundred pounds, and that was the start of it.
“Tu Va wasn’t a world beater,” says his trainer and oftentimes rider, “and he didn’t win very often. But he did finish second or third quite often, you’d get £60 or £80 for finishing second. Money was tight, but I was training him, so the training was free, and I was riding him, and transport was free. CIE would come and pick you up and take you to Sligo, take you to Ballinrobe. That made a big difference.”
Tu Va never won at the Galway Festival, but he went close at the festival, and he won at Galway’s September meeting.
Galway then, of course, was different to Galway now, but it was still a huge racing week.
“It always had an enormous attraction for country people,” says Noel. “And a lot of the credit for the success of Galway has to go to Luke Mullins. He kept bigging up the big races. The supporting races were worth very little then, but the big races were big, and everybody wanted to be there, have runners there, have winners there. It caught everybody’s imagination.”
That attraction continues today.
“It’s a people’s festival. You see ordinary fellows in the parade ring. It’s a handicappers meeting, and I hope that never changes. Lads get a big kick out of having a runner in a 0-70 handicap. I see a few more novice hurdles in there now, but I hope they don’t change that.”
Eight-time champion National Hunt trainer in Ireland, Noel Meade’s record at Galway is another constant. Pinch Hitter won the McDonogh Handicap in 1981 as a three-year-old, unusually, and he went back in 1982 and won it again as a four-year-old. Three days later, he won the Galway Hurdle under Jonjo O’Neill.
“That was a great day, probably my best day ever in racing. Since I was a kid, the Galway Hurdle was the one race that I wanted to win, more than any other race in the world. So for Pinch Hitter to win it, and Jonjo riding, and owned by Finbarr. It was unbelievable. I remember going around the track on the car afterwards, Finbarr and me sitting on the roof. We went back to Salthill eventually, to the Ardilaun Hotel, and continued the celebrations.”
Then Pinch Hitter went back to Galway in 1983 and completed back-to-back victories in the Galway Hurdle.
There were other Galway perennials who went west from Tu Va. Steel Duke loved Galway too. Dusky Fox. Meade has won just about every big race during Galway week at least once, and several of them on several occasions. Road To Riches provided him with his first victory in the Galway Plate when he won it in 2014 and, 10 years later, the trainer bagged his second with Pinkerton. More Rainbows provided him with his third win in the Galway Hurdle in 2015 and, 20 years later, last year, it looked like Helvic Dream had provided him with his fourth. The then eight-year-old gelding got to the winning line first, a head in front of the Gordon Elliott-trained Ndaawi, but the places were reversed in the stewards’ room.
“It was gutting, to be honest,” says the trainer now. “It was like someone pulled the bottom out of your stomach. But Gordon and I are good friends, and that’s the way it goes. We shook hands and we move on. That’s all you can do.”
Helvic Dream is on track for the Galway Hurdle again on Thursday.
“He’s nine years old now,” says his trainer. “He’s not getting any younger, and, when you get to his stage, you’re always vulnerable to a young unexposed horse coming up against you. But this has been his target for a while, and he’s going there in really good form. We know that he likes the track.”
Jesse Evans likes the track too, and he is on course for the Galway Plate on Wednesday. One year older than Helvic Dream, Jack Singleton’s horse finished fourth in the Galway Hurdle in 2021, he finished second in the race in 2022 and again in 2023, and he finished second in the Plate last year. He is on track for the Plate again this year, and he proved his wellbeing and his undimmed enthusiasm for racing when he ran out an impressive winner of a good chase at Listowel last month.
“He was great at Listowel, and he goes there in great form. He’s 10 now, but I can’t have him in better form than he is in at the moment and I hope that he can go well again.”
His Ulster Derby winner Madbadanddangerous has been declared for the 12-furlong handicap tomorrow evening, and the three-year-old gelding also holds an entry in the premier handicap on Friday. Ben Hur is in the two-mile handicap on Wednesday, Thursday’s Leopardstown winner Tatum could run in the Guinness 0.0 Handicap on Thursday, Acanto might run at the end of the week too.
Busy week in store. That hasn’t changed either.
© The Sunday Times, 26th July 2026
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